Ambush
The caravan inched slowly down the cobbled stone road. Here and there, a box squeaked, a horse whinnied and barrels bumped quietly into each other. Weary guards rubbed their eyes, convinced that nothing would happen. The caravan trundled along, slowly. Visana yawned. She hated guard duty, and she hated guarding items that were not necessarily useful for the Magi in Dalaran even more. This, then, was something that she hated most of all; escorting a caravan out of the City of Magi, and into the countryside. It was a delivery of enchanted weapons, which would be taken to Southshore and then loaded onto transport ships, final destination being the city of Stormwind. She turned to Moarte, the mage next to her. “Any idea when this will be over and done with?” she said, conversationally. “No idea,” he replied, “Not sure why we’re doing this...” The early morning dew made the grass glisten, and still the caravan trundled on, guards seemingly oblivious to the fact that there were no bird sounds, no rustle of grass when animals prowled. There was, in fact, little of anything. To quote a tried and true cliché, it was quiet. Too quiet. The caravan continued down the road, still slow, its guards, still tired. The grass rustled slightly, as if a predator was on the prowl. Suddenly, a cylindrical object, roughly ten centimetres in diameter and twenty centimetres in length. This in and of itself wouldn’t exactly be a problem, other than the fact that there was a fuse connected to it.* And said fuse was slowly burning down. A multitude of these devices flung themselves from the foliage, and explosions wracked the area, in front, behind and on top of the caravan. Crates exploded, barrels collapsed and the horses threw their riders and bucked in terror. Visana was thrown to the ground, partly from the shockwaves of the exploding bombs and partly from shock and surprise. All around, people were thrown from the caravans, swords, bows, axes and hammers spilled onto the ground. Explosions tore men, women and caravan alike into shreds, blood stained the ground. Black garbed men, wearing orange face masks burst from the shrubbery, assaulting the caravan with sword, bow and magic. Missiles of various kinds, arrows, stones, bolts of arcane and elemental energy thudded into wood and flesh. Men screamed in pain. Visana saw three men in front of her fall, gurgling with arrows in the throat. Burning, destruction, chaos. Death. A fire burned in front of her. Another explosion. Shower of shrapnel, dirt. Sound lost. All silence. A slideshow of death, how life ends. Moarte, fighting a man with a sword. Man, jugular cut open, showering ground with blood. Death. Was this how life ended? Question, unanswered... Sound slowly returned to her, though that simply added the sounds of death to the sights. Sounds of carnage, men, women crying for their mothers...Visana shook her head. Moarte! She looked at him, fighting with his enemy, slowly losing. His staff blocks were getting slower...and his enemy’s swings were getting faster. She readied a spell, chanting arcane words, making intricate hand motions. Too slow. The chaos of the melee kept distracting her; she lost her train of thought halfway through her spell. Another explosion. Once again, her ears failed her. This time, the explosion knocked something in front of her. The Grimoire. Use me... She tried to ignore the sound in her head. Her spell fizzled. Use me. She reached for the book, head pounding. USE ME Her hands touched it, and then, suddenly, her vision cleared, and she focused. Focused, and a bolt of shadow left her hand. Focused, as the bolt hit Moarte. Focused, as he writhed in main, bits of his flesh melting away. Focused, as he fell to the ground, screaming in pain. Focused, as his blood joined that of the others on the ground. Distantly, she was aware of his foe advancing towards her. She idly sent another bolt of shadow at him, and he joined the ranks of the dead. She dropped the grimoire, not even aware that she had picked it up. She walked over to Moarte, or what was left of him, and shut his eyelids. She was crying. She was laughing. * Of course, it makes no sense at all to any smart readers how anyone can tell something like that in a split second, but, dear reader, that’s for your convenience. I mean, us writers can’t just describe everything from the protagonist’s point of view, else most things would be “That shiny object” or “Explosion thingy”